This invention relates to a cooking apparatus. More specifically, this invention relates to a cooking apparatus for the grilling of food.
Various devices have been used in the grilling of foods. Among other techniques, grilling may use gas heating or electric heating.
A gas heated cooking apparatus such as used domestically indoors or outdoors or for commercial grilling consists of an open flame burner or burners for heating the food. The food is in most cases held in place over the burner by an open wire or metal grill coated with porcelain or chrome to avoid rust. To reduce flare ups caused by grease fires, baffles of a variety of shapes have been suspended between the flame and the food. Although this may reduce the amount of flame coming in contact with the food or coming above the grill surface, such baffle techniques do not completely eliminate the potential fire hazard that can occur with a large grease fire. Such baffles reduce, but do not eliminate the potential carcinogens produced when animal fats come in contact with an open flame. It is generally believed that such contact between animal fats and an open flame produce carcinogenic pyrrolated hydrocarbons.
In addition to the problems of fire safety and production of carcinogens, gas grilling produces heat unevenly. This often creates hot spots that tend to burn and dry foods out at some locations. Also, because of the potential for excessively high temperatures that can occur, non-stick, easy-clean coatings often cannot be used on the grill or wire grid. This in turn makes it difficult to clean the grids as the grids are prone to have food stick to them. Such sticking problems associated with porcelain and chrome can make it quite difficult to grill fish and hamburger, among other types of food.
Electrical heating has also been used for grilling. Such arrangements usually have heat provided by a tubular electrical resistance heater such as the type commonly sold under the trademark CAL-ROD. The heater is placed below an open cooking wire grid similar to that used with gas units. Some designs use a reflector pan mounted just below the heating element in order to reflect some of the heat that would normally be wasted. Such heating elements normally must be run red hot for periods of time during the cooking cycle. When the element is red hot, animal fats coming into contact with the element will immediately burn. This may create the grease fire and carcinogenic hazards in the same general manner as discussed above. Further, such heating element arrangements may also have hot spots and uneven heating causing some foods or some parts of a food to dry and burn. Also, certain types of cooking devices such as barbecues can be operated only on 110 volts such that the heating is very slow and inefficient.
In addition to the above types of grilling, charcoal has been used for grilling food. Generally, the charcoal is disposed below an open wire grill or grid upon which the food is placed. Animal fats dropping from the food often cause the charcoal to flame up. This in turn produces the grease fire hazards and carcinogenic problems discussed.
Because of the fire hazards associated with grilling on the devices mentioned above, most condominiums or apartments along with municipalities forbid the use of these types of grilling devices.
In addition to the fire hazards discussed, animal fats generally produce smoke when coming into contact with heat sources that are normally in excess of 550.degree. F. This eliminates the potential use of the grilling device indoors with the exception of relatively small smokeless devices. Some attempts have been made to produce larger grills that are smokeless by incorporating the electrical element into the cooking grid by using a die cast process. Generally, this cooking grid is in one piece and becomes very cumbersome to clean as they normally will not fit into most sinks and dishwashers.